In a candid chat with Sidharth Bhatia, Manoj Kumar Jha, an academic and an articulate parliamentarian, wondered what Gandhi would say to the prime minister's dog whistling from the Red Fort. 

Below is the full text of the chat between Bhatia and Jha, as part of The Wire Talks. Transcribed by Ashita Kedia, an editorial intern at The Wire, it has been edited for readability and brevity.

Sidharth Bhatia (SB): Hello and welcome to The Wire Talks. I am Sidharth Bhatia.

It is often said that Parliament today is not what it used to be in the old days, when MPs would rebel and engage in the cut and thrust of debates. Opposition leaders then would put the government on the mat, and the treasury benches too pushed back strongly against their political opponents. This is not strictly true today either—there are still parliamentarians who come armed with facts and arguments, and whenever Parliament convenes, debates do happen. Perhaps it’s more about nostalgia, about looking back and thinking those were the days. Of course, we remember some of the great parliamentarians of the past.

Professor Manoj Kumar Jha is one such MP of the present who has come to be respected for his parliamentary skills. He is a Rajya Sabha member from the Rashtriya Janata Dal, holds a PhD in social work from the University of Delhi, and teaches there as a professor. He is also a regular writer for newspapers and websites on current affairs, and his new book—a collection of his columns—has just been published under the title In Praise of Coalition Politics and Other Essays on Indian Democracy. Manoj Kumar Jha, welcome to The Wire Talks.

Manoj Kumar Jha (MKJ): Thank you so much, Sidharth ji.

SB: These essays cover a very wide range of topics—from Kashmir and property rights to the RSS, and even your letters to Gandhi ji and Pandit Nehru. When I read them, I felt – correct me if I’m wrong – that they paint a somewhat grim picture of where India is today. Is that how you see the nation at this moment?

MKJ: Look, Sidharth ji, just a few hours ago two fine journalists were literally being hounded by the Assam government and police. Each time I try to look for a source of light at the end of the tunnel, I realise the tunnel seems endless and the light invisible. Nobody likes to paint a grim picture, but the last few years have been very difficult—for anyone who values freedom or talks about equality.

Imagine someone today talking about equality—he or she gets branded an “urban Naxal.” Someone asking for greater freedom for minorities is told “Go to Pakistan.” These are no longer fringe views; they’ve been mainstreamed. What used to be marginal dog-whistling has now occupied the very centre of our political and public life.

In that situation, I’ve found letter writing to be a powerful way of expression. I admire Nehru for his letters—he wrote to almost everyone. I do the same with my daughters: every birthday, I write them a personal letter, reflecting on the issues of the time. Extending this genre, I sometimes write letters from historical figures to the present—for instance, from Jawaharlal Nehru to the current Prime Minister, or from Jayaprakash Narayan. The idea is to bring their thoughts into today’s context.

So yes, while the book may seem to paint a grim picture, my intent is to show that even through these dark times, there is hope for an end to this authoritarian phase we are all enduring.

SB: So, what you’re saying – and we’ll come to your letters to Gandhi ji and Nehru ji later – is that this is perhaps just a phase. Am I right? India will come out of this?

MKJ: Somewhere deep down, I do believe that. There was a historian, Oswald Spengler, who wrote about the rise and fall of civilisations. I often think of his ideas in the context of individuals, ideas, and historical moments.

I believe the Indian people, by and large, are tolerant and accommodating—that’s how our civilisation has grown. I’ve also written, though not yet published, that ideas or individuals who seem popular at a particular moment in history may not necessarily be progressive or pro-humanity when judged 20 or 50 years later.

But this is not just about elections or day-to-day politics. The real damage is in our public and social life—the rupture of interpersonal and community relationships. Even if a new government comes to power tomorrow, healing this rupture will take years. It cannot be undone with one election result. The “othering” and demonisation of communities was happening even before 2014 at a subterranean level. What we see now is its full bloom. Undoing it will take massive effort.

SB: So Manoj, would you say the social fabric has been torn? Can it be repaired?

MKJ: It can be repaired, Sidharth ji, but I don’t know how long it will take. When I hear people talk about “soft Hindutva,” I feel alarmed. For me, there cannot be a soft version of an idea that goes against the Gandhian, Nehruvian, or Ambedkarite ideals of constitutional morality.

Too much poison has spread in society. Even if a like-minded government comes to power tomorrow, the challenges will be huge. To use a computer metaphor: we will need a reboot. And rebooting requires shutting down for a while before starting again. I hope we can do it—I have no option but to hope.

SB: Now, coming to your book—there are so many essays I can’t touch on all of them. But the first one, which gives the book its title, intrigued me. Conventional wisdom says coalitions are shaky and unstable. But you argue that India itself is a civilisational coalition, and that consensus-building has always been central. You cite several political events and coalition governments. Do you really think coalitions are not inherently shaky? After all, many Indians crave a “strong government” that can take firm decisions.

MKJ: History is full of examples where strong governments and strong leaders caused devastation. I don’t even need to go back to Germany in the 1930s—contemporary examples abound.

India itself, as a nation and a civilisation, is built on coalitions. The Constitution describes India as a “Union of States,” but metaphorically, it is a coalition of ideas, cultures, religions, languages, attitudes, temperaments, even clothing. For every alphabet, you could find an example of how India is a coalition.

Now, people often equate stability with a strong single-party government. But stability for what, and for whom? Politics is about resource distribution and representation – who gets what, where, when, how, and why. These are the questions strong governments tend to push under the carpet.

Coalitions, on the other hand, are not contradictions. They disturb the status quo temporarily in order to build a deeper and more durable stability. Think of the Indian National Congress at its birth: it was not a single-party organisation but a coalition of individuals and ideas. Nehru’s cabinet too was a coalition of people with fundamental differences, yet they came together to govern a diverse country.

My own experience – as a teacher and a parliamentarian – tells me that the more diverse the coalition, the more progressive the agenda. By contrast, single-party strong governments often suffocate democracy – inside Parliament and even within their own parties.

SB: I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment. The government at the Centre today is, factually, a coalition. The previous Modi government was technically a coalition too, but it had its own majority. This time, it depends on two very strong regional parties. Theoretically, if either of them were to withdraw support, the government could collapse. And yet, this government behaves in an unbridled way, doing whatever it wants. We don’t hear a word from its coalition partners.

MKJ: You’re right, but let me take you back to June 2024. I had never seen a prime minister refer to his own government by name – Modi Sarkar. That was how Mr. Modi described it earlier. But since June 2024, he has started calling it the NDA government. That’s not just a change of vocabulary; it reflects a change in political reality.

After the 2024 mandate, many of the government’s ideas and proposals began going to Joint Parliamentary Committees and select committees. For instance, “One Nation, One Election” was referred to a JPC. This was not the case before. The difference with Atal Bihari Vajpayee is telling. Vajpayee never had a full majority, so by temperament he was a coalition man. Narendra Modi is not. By nature, by manner, by attitude, he is a majoritarian leader. He doesn’t even consult his cabinet – he is the cabinet.

That’s why my first reaction after the 2024 results was that he remains a majoritarian prime minister, but one now forced to function without a majority of his own. That is difficult for him. Even so, you see some signs – at least symbolically – of consensus-building. For example, in 2019 he might have unilaterally chosen C.P. Radhakrishnan as vice-presidential candidate. This time, he presented it as a decision taken after consultation with leaders like Chandrababu Naidu, Nitish Kumar, and others.

There is a churn underway. We’ll see more in the coming months. But my larger point is this: if India has to remain united, conveying the message that everyone is equal from north to south, east to west, we must embrace a coalition paradigm. The ethos of single-party majoritarianism is fundamentally antithetical to the very foundation of India.

SB: One of your essays, The Trouble with EWS Reservations, caught my eye. You argue that reservations should be about caste, not economic status. But aren’t caste and economic weakness often linked?

MKJ: The background to that essay is when the government introduced EWS reservations. I, along with the DMK, raised concerns in Parliament. My arguments were threefold.

First, our Constitution talks about social and educational backwardness, not economic backwardness. Second, while poverty is undeniable, it is also proven that poverty is disproportionately concentrated among the lower castes. The higher you go in the caste hierarchy, the less prevalent poverty becomes. So caste and poverty are related, but not the same.

Third, reservations are not about poverty eradication or employment generation. They are about representation. Babasaheb Ambedkar was crystal clear on this and spoke about it repeatedly.

Finally, when the Mandal Commission recommended OBC reservations, it was backed by volumes of data and evidence. In the case of EWS, there was none. No affirmative action programme anywhere in the world has been implemented without evidence. That absence of data is what I called a fundamental flaw in the EWS framework.

SB: You mentioned earlier that you write letters to your daughters, which I found very charming. They’ll grow up to see them not only as personal reflections but as a record of how their father viewed the country. You’ve also written letters to Gandhi and Nehru. In one letter to Gandhi ji, you wrote: “The truth, Bapu, is that the condition of your country feels even worse than it was during Partition.” Is that anger, anguish, or frustration speaking?

MKJ: It’s anguish, Sidharth ji. Let me explain. When I was a student, I read Sumit Sarkar’s Modern India. He wrote within a Marxist framework, but what touched me was the emotional intensity with which he described the last phase of Gandhi’s life. While the nation celebrated independence in 1947, Gandhi was in Bengal, grieving over the violence of Partition. He wasn’t just pained by the division of the country, but by the partition of villages, towns, and communities.

Later, I read Pyarelal’s The Last Phase. That deepened my understanding of Gandhi’s pain. When I look at India today – the demonisation of minorities, especially Muslims – it is impossible not to think of him. Partition hurt both sides, but at least some healing began afterwards. Today, instead of healing, we are creating new wounds.

Writers like Rahi Masoom Raza, in Adha Gaon, captured how Partition fractured communities. But India moved on. Today, however, Muslims are constantly asked for loyalty certificates. People are targeted simply for having a Muslim name. Bengali speakers are called Bangladeshis. It is heartbreaking to see this poisoning of the national psyche.

I was pained this 15th of August when the Prime Minister stood at the Red Fort and used language that was clear dog-whistling—this, after visiting Rajghat. How would Gandhi have reacted? That’s why I write these letters: to reimagine Gandhi speaking to Modi, or myself writing to Gandhi.

The same goes for Nehru. I’ve said in Parliament that while he may have made mistakes during his 17 years, he and others of his generation laid the foundations of inclusive, secular, democratic India. Later governments built upon those foundations. But today, we constantly hear that the foundation itself was weak. Recently, NCERT even revised textbooks to say that Partition was the responsibility of Congress and Jinnah alike.

We are living in an age of untruths and post-truths. The only solace is to recall the India envisioned by Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar – an India grounded in inclusion, constitutional morality, and truth.

SB: In your letter to Nehru, you say the current regime is at war with his ideas. Why do you think that is happening – this constant erasure and rewriting?

MKJ: Because those who don’t feel a sense of belonging in history try to change it. When an organisation has no role in the historical narrative, it seeks to alter the narrative itself. That is what we are witnessing.

The first targets were universities. We’ve seen syllabi tampered with, academic freedoms curtailed. As a teacher, I have always welcomed a dialogue between left, right, and centre. But in the past 10-12 years, what we see instead is erasure. You can rename cities or railway stations, but you cannot erase history or memory. Memory is collective, passed down across generations – not just through textbooks but through lived experiences.

Yet this government is attempting exactly that, starting with universities. Take Jawaharlal Nehru University. It was vilified not just because it carried Nehru’s name, but because it stood for freedom of thought and expression – values upheld by educators like Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Paulo Freire.

Instead, the government thrives on manufactured knowledge. There is a school of history called counterfactual history, which speculates: what if Caesar had not crossed the Rubicon? That has its place as imagination, not ideology. But here, counterfactuals are being weaponised to suit political narratives. That undermines education at its core.

Education should be a liberating experience. What we are seeing instead is its distortion.

SB: You mentioned earlier about a sense of belonging – I really liked that line. Taking off from there, I want to come to your essay The RSS and Government Servants. I’ll quote from it: “The RSS strategy is to loosen the rules of political engagement for the bureaucracy on the one hand, while shackling intellectuals on the other.” Is the RSS now entering every aspect of Indian political, cultural, and social life?

MKJ: Let me read a line from the same essay: “Being the organisation that gave birth to the phenomenon called Nathuram Godse…” I use the word “phenomenon,” not “individual,” because to blame only one man for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi is to ignore the magnitude of the event. No dispensation should ever have allowed his rehabilitation in the public sphere.

Sidharth ji, since my early days in school and college, I had never seen anyone celebrate Nathuram Godse on January 30. But now I have. I saw a lady who called him “the greatest patriot” being sent to the Lok Sabha by the same organisation. I won’t say it was officially the BJP – because lateral entry through the BJP often serves as cover for people with RSS inclinations, sometimes outright affiliation.

Today, in every Indian university, there is an unwritten directive to vice-chancellors: when making appointments, ensure the candidate has that affiliation. If you analyse their social media posts, you see a flood of individuals openly declaring RSS slogans or posting the image of Bharat Mata with a saffron flag, a near replica of the Nagpur headquarters’ imagery.

When I wrote about this, I was thinking of an old government circular. Earlier, there was a ban: government servants should not be seen participating in RSS activities. That ban was lifted. It became part of the “normalisation.” Even now, when the current Vice Presidential candidate is spoken about, the only credential mentioned is that he’s a “die-hard RSS man.” Should that be treated as a qualification for a position once held by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan?

And interestingly, in the old Parliament House, just in front of the presiding officer’s chair, there used to be a photograph of Radhakrishnan, perhaps to remind anyone occupying that chair of the principles he had set. In the new Parliament, that image has been removed.

This is why, when you asked your first question, I said: maybe we will win the next election, because elections, after all, are arithmetic. But the psychological damage that has been done to the Indian people, to their understanding, their knowledge systems, their sense of history, that damage will require much more than an election victory. It will have to be undone by we, the people of India, as the opening line of the Preamble reminds us.

SB: It’s no secret that the influential middle and upper-middle classes, and indeed people from other sections of society, have absorbed this message wholeheartedly. They are not sensitive about it. In any housing society, you hear these conversations. WhatsApp groups, of course, are full of it. Speaking of Dr Radhakrishnan, who set such standards, and now with an “RSS man” in that position, and with the spectacle of the previous Vice President and Rajya Sabha Chairman resigning under mysterious circumstances and then virtually vanishing, do you think the quality of parliamentary debates has fallen?

MKJ: Yes, indeed, Sidharth ji. It has fallen. If you read the debates of the first, second, third, even up to the fifth Lok Sabha, they were rich, informative, and full of original thought. Members rarely read out written speeches; it was not considered good parliamentary practice. You could keep notes, but the speech had to be your own.

One parliamentarian I greatly admired, though I never heard him speak in person, was Professor Hiren Mukherjee of the CPI, who served five or six terms. I have read almost all his speeches. Or take Lohia ji – he was in Parliament only for a limited time but made powerful interventions. Nehru himself did. Feroze Gandhi, I would call him a one-man opposition from within the Congress. We don’t see debates of that calibre today.

That said, I won’t say quality has vanished altogether. There have been moments. In my own parliamentary career, in 2021, I spoke during a debate on COVID. I had prepared a very different speech, but given the mood of the nation, I said: “There is no Member of Parliament here who does not know at least one person who died during this pandemic.” Afterward, many BJP MPs came up to me and said, “You spoke for me.” In that moment, I felt Parliament still has the capacity to rise above partisan politics.

But I must also draw attention to another essay I wrote: Government Is Not the Nation. Every day a journalist, student, poet, cartoonist, or opposition leader is hounded because criticism of the government is equated with criticism of the nation. But the nation is eternal; governments are temporary. Governments come with a five-year mandate, sometimes they disappear even sooner. To love one’s nation is to question one’s government. We did it during Congress rule, during UPA rule. Why is it sacrosanct today?

When sedition charges are filed against a reporter in Assam, it doesn’t only speak poorly of the government’s attitude. It reflects a deeper disgrace, a fall from the values that define India. And I want Parliament to send the opposite message.

Even recently, I said in Parliament: I may critique my judiciary because Justice Krishna himself wrote that contempt of court is a myth. If I critique my Prime Minister or government, it is because I want my nation to appear more beautiful, more just. These are not strange ideas I have invented. I draw them from the parliamentary traditions of those who once critiqued Nehru, even as Nehru sat through the debates without discomfort.

That’s why I say: the fall is happening at multiple levels, and it must be arrested—for the idea of India will continue, even if parties come and go.

SB: I can’t help noticing all the film posters behind you and around your house. Since I too love cinema, let me end by asking you this: even though things look grim, do you think wo subah kabhi to ayegi – that morning will come someday?

MKJ: Ayegi, wo subah kabhi to ayegi (Yes, that morning will come someday). But remember what Faiz wrote: “Yeh daag-daag ujala, yeh shab-gazida sahar, woh intezaar tha jiska, yeh woh sahar to nahin.” I am certain we will see that morning. But yes, this dark night is proving rather long. Still, its dawn will come.

SB: On that note, Professor Manoj Kumar Jha, thank you so much. I must tell you I have been reading your book. I may have missed a few essays, since it reached me only recently, but what I’ve read calls for more. You write regularly for various publications, so hopefully, Inshallah, there will be more books, and more dialogues like this.

MKJ: Let me make an announcement here with you. My next project is Letters to Nehru. Perhaps I’ll collaborate with others who share ideas about parliamentary democracy, freedom, and equality. Nehru wrote so many letters to people; I think it’s time we wrote letters back to Nehru.

SB: Wonderful. Thank you, Professor Manoj Kumar Jha. That was a very enlightening conversation. I recommend that your book someday be made compulsory reading in universities. We’ll be back next week with another guest. Till then, from me, Sidharth Bhatia, and the rest of the team, goodbye.

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